CalAmp (Nasdaq: CAMP), a connected intelligence company helping businesses and people track, monitor and recover vital assets with real-time visibility and insights, announced it is providing its CalAmp Telematics Cloud (CTC) and edge computing devices to enhance FAIRWAYiQ’s golf course operations and golf cart fleet management platform – a unique opportunity that shows the extensibility of CalAmp’s telematics cloud and edge device platform. This partnership brings CalAmp’s leading fleet and asset tracking solutions from the road to the golf course, enabling FAIRWAYiQ to provide course operators with real-time visibility over gameplay and operations connected intelligence at the edge to optimize course maintenance, player pace-of-play and, ultimately, each golfer’s experience.
FAIRWAYiQ was founded in 2015 to address the growing need for digital technologies and data analytics in managing the flow of play on golf courses to reduce wait times. The company has since become the operations and turf management solutions provider of choice for some of North America’s most prestigious golf clubs, public courses and private communities. Looking to improve and expand beyond the capabilities of its self-manufactured GPS sensors, FAIRWAYiQ turned to CalAmp for its broad portfolio of reliable edge devices, cloud platform and expertise in the development of custom fleet and asset management solutions.
“I launched FAIRWAYiQ with the goal of connecting everything on the golf course to help properties drive efficiency, improve the player experience and lower operating costs,” said Dave Vanslette, founder and CEO of FAIRWAYiQ. “As our business expanded, demand for our technology outpaced our device and technology capacity especially with the global supply chain issues. I recognized CalAmp as a leader in IoT who could readily provide the connectivity and visibility we needed, as well as enhance our platform’s functionality. CalAmp has exceeded our expectations, delivering a solution that met our specific use cases in less than two months and has become an integral part of our business. Working with their telematics experts, we’ve been able to scale our business with faster time-to-market of our services and new features, and free up cash flow to support our sales and marketing.”
For FAIRWAYiQ, CalAmp currently provides:
GPS-Enabled Tracking Devices for Golf Cart Location Monitoring: A weatherproof, Bluetooth-enabled GPS device installed on individual golf carts transmits real-time location information so operations teams can see where cart and walking groups are on the course. This visibility allows teams to intelligently manage the pace of play by identifying bottlenecks, slow players and player wait times. The system works in the background and alerts golf operators to issues they need to address without having to drive around. Weatherproof and Bluetooth-enabled, the device also features an accelerometer for motion sensing and monitoring golf cart driving speed. Additional handheld devices help to track walking groups for a complete view of all players on the course.
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Key Fobs for Player and Employee Identification: While GPS devices provide location information about each golf cart, assigned BLE key fobs help identify the individuals that are driving each cart at any given time. The key fob can also be used to call the beverage cart. Similarly, key fobs associated with golf course staff members provide visibility into who is using what maintenance equipment. With this insight, superintendents can ensure courses are well-maintained and pristine by monitoring ongoing maintenance tasks. Identifying inefficiencies from individual staff performance data helps with employee management, and equipment usage history enables better lifecycle asset management. This is helping with the golf industries biggest issue in lack of staff.
Geofencing and Edge Computing for Improved Course Management: Operations teams can set up geofenced boundaries to prevent carts from driving into unauthorized areas, such as a wet area where the turf could be damaged. Turf damage is one of the largest expense items for golf courses. A buzzer that’s wired to a CalAmp edge-computing device in the golf cart will detect and alert groups if they are entering an unauthorized zone or exceeding course speed limits notifications that happen instantaneously within the cart.
Connected Intelligence for Smarter Decision Making: The CTC platform connects and manages all CalAmp devices used in a FAIRWAYiQ implementation. Using Amazon Kinesis and CalAmp’s flexible Application Programming Interface, the platform processes and flows real-time data from these devices into a format that’s easily ingested by FAIRWAYiQ’s platform. With this connected intelligence, golf course operations teams can make smarter management decisions. And the customizing capability of CTC enables users to write and access applications for edge devices, such as the geofencing and buzzer alerts around the unauthorized golf course areas.
“FAIRWAYiQ’s location intelligence platform exemplifies what’s possible with the convergence of telematics, edge computing and the cloud. We are excited to see such innovative thinking and how our connected intelligence platform can be leveraged to deliver value to golf course operators, and even more excited that our telematics platform proved once again it can track anything that moves,” said Jeff Clark, senior vice president of product management, CalAmp. “With our solution, businesses and industries can work, manage and in the case of golf courses play smarter. It’s exciting to see that FAIRWAYiQ’s golf course customers will not only have visibility to manage the course flow and maintenance of their entire course operations, but they also can take immediate action based on real-time visibility from the edge to the tee to the green. We’re thrilled to showcase our partnership and the transformative impact of connected intelligence in new markets with such a pioneer in the golf industry.”
About FAIRWAYiQ
FAIRWAYiQ optimizes golf and turf operations by managing everything that moves on the golf course. GPS sensor technology is used across carts, walkers, caddies, maintenance equipment, operators and tasks. We use locational intelligence, data and analytics to improve the pace of play, reduce wait time, improve the player experience, reduce costs and increase revenue at golf course facilities of all types including private clubs, golf communities, resorts, and public facilities.
About CalAmp
CalAmp (Nasdaq: CAMP) is a connected intelligence company that helps people and businesses work smarter. We partner with transportation and logistics, industrial equipment, government and automotive industries to deliver insights that enable businesses to make the right decisions. Our applications, platforms and smart devices allow them to track, monitor and recover their vital assets with real-time visibility that reduces costs, maximizes productivity and improves safety. Headquartered in Irvine, California, CalAmp has been publicly traded since 1983. We have 22 million products installed and over 1.3 million software and services subscribers worldwide. For more information, visit calamp.com, or LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or CalAmp Blog.
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